Anyone have a Paypal account?

For those of you who don't know, I am moving in the next month. One of the perks of moving into a nicer, bigger place, is that we bought newer, nicer things - including a TV. So now I am in the process of selling our old TV and TV stand.

I decided to give Facebook Marketplace a shot. I lised the TV stand for $50, with a photo of it. It's in great condition - I even decided to wipe the dust off it!!!

Within a few hours, I get this:


xxxxxxx xxxxxx March 29 at 3:50am Report
I am interested in purchasing your listing as a birthday gift for my immediate sister schooling in a private university in Africa Nigeria. So i will be paying you $500 for the item and $200 for shipping to him in Africa and am paying via paypal, do get back to me with your PayPal id for the payment as i will be paying via a secured method of payment. Hoping to hear from you ASAP!.

So....anyone have a Paypal account? =P I'm so eager to ship my TV unit off to Nigeria. I'm really curious about this private university in Nigeria as well, and how the gender of her sister changed in the second sentence. Another interesting thing to note, is that the person who messaged me claims to work for Disney...does Disney have any connections with private Nigerian universities?

Miscellaneous from Edinburgh

#1

There are some things that I can make do with ASDA Smart Price or Sainsbury's Basics products. Recently I learned that jaffa cakes aren't among them. At almost a third of the price of the original McVitie's brand, they seemed quite harmless to my budget... though after a month or two of indulging in at least two or three boxes a week of the original stuff, it becomes pretty obvious that the price difference is there for a good reason. Actually, just laying one of each other would already give it away, since the ASDA Smart Price jaffa cakes are significantly flatter and poorly shaped. Even the taste isn't quite the same.

#2

It seems that my neighbourhood is a favourite for ice cream trucks, some of which could possibly be ghost trucks at the same time. Since September, I'd hear the familiar sound of an ice cream truck at odd times of the day. 3pm, 7pm, you name it.... around 10.30pm seems to be a common time too. The oddest thing was that I didn't actually see an ice cream truck with my own eyes until February.

When I was growing up, I don't think I ever saw or heard an ice cream truck after 5pm. Do kids in this area actually buy ice cream at such a late hour? Especially when the area has a reputation for being a little dodgy?

#3

Recycling seems to a relatively new thing here. Most houses don't have recycling bins. And the ones that do, there are two options: 1) cardboard, and 2) glass and tin. As an unintentionally avid user of plastic containers in various forms, my heart breaks every time I have to throw a plastic bottle into a regular rubbish bin. Given the abundance of plastic out there, it's a pity that the option to recycle domestic plastic waste doesn't exist yet. Unless, of course, I bring in a bunch of bottles to campus, where there do exist recycling bins for that very purpose.

#4

In a fair number of cities, public transportation stops running after a certain hour, somewhere around 2am in general I believe. Edinburgh has night buses that run through the night, though even with a bus pass, there is an extra charge. A flat fare of £3 for a ticket that works on all night buses on that same night, £1.50 (half price) for those that have a bus pass. With a few late nights out every week, that quickly adds up to a fair amount of money on top of what I already pay for my bus pass. And the night buses start leaving the city centre just after midnight, which is still very early for a night out. Oh well, us students (and most other bus riders) suck it up because it's still cheaper than taking a taxi.

#5

Despite the fears at the beginning of the academic year, haggis is quite tasty, and a lot of people seem to agree with me. Just avoid the canned stuff like a plague. No comments on deep fried haggis yet, that's still on my list of foods to try.

#6

To quote Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett's The Wyrd Sisters, "Things that try to look like things often look more like things than things." And sure enough, apparently Glasgow looks more like Edinburgh than Edinburgh itself. The movie Trainspotting, based on the novel of of the same name by Irvine Welsh, is set in Edinburgh, but was mostly filmed in Glasgow. Only two scenes were filmed in Edinburgh. No wonder I couldn't recognize much more than Princes Street!

#7

Scotland isn't exactly known for its ethnic diversity. And most of the Asians in this town are clustered around Edinburgh University, not near Heriot-Watt. So is it a surprise that someone like myself is a rare sight in my neighbourhood? Once in a while, little kids (maybe around 10 years old?) walk up to me and say "Hi, how are you?" or "Hi, my name is Larry." Now that's still cute. But when kids see me and start saying "Ni hao, ni hao" in a disdaining manner, I start wondering what will become of these ignorant brats.

Not all Oriental people are Chinese, and even if they were, it just doesn't sound nice when kids say that the way they do.